Sonic Omens

It's pretty okay IMO. The better designed Sonic stages are actually pretty fun, and I like them quite a bit. The Sonic portion of the game is just held back by overall lack of polish with bugs appearing semi-frequently. I can't help but feel that with these they should've gone with quality over quantity and had less Sonic stages but more really fun ones like Area 99 and less shitty ones like White Jungle.

The bosses are a bit annoying but nothing really that offensive, although they do drag on a bit and sometimes the hitboxes feel janky to me but I could just be imagining it.

The Tails stages are not fun though. They hold back the game immensely to me, and that's not just because it's different from Sonic, I'm the type of person who adores the Werehog, but because it just controls horribly and I constantly run into things. They're genuinely infuriating to me. After completing the game I have not revisited these once, they are that bad, even though I have been replaying the Sonic stages a couple times each.

As for the story, it's pretty cringey sometimes but honestly it doesn't bother me that much. Yes, Chris Thorndyke fucking dying for whatever reason is odd, and the voice acting is mediocre, but it's a good effort for a fan game that didn't exactly have fat stacks of cash and was just funded off of a Patreon. It probably would've been better if it had put more resources into the writing rather than the voice acting and animation and had done slideshows in the style of Sonic GT rather than trying to create something more "cinematic" ala Unleashed.

TL;DR, it's a good effort and I appreciate the scope put into it, but it comes short on too many aspects to be to be truly great. It probably would've been better if it just had Sonic stages and the story wasn't trying to be so grand and massive. If this project had a smaller scope I could easily have seen it becoming something really fun and good, but this game's scope is just too big for it's own good.

Also sidenote, this might just be an issue with my PC but the game runs like shit and I have to put it to minimum settings to run it at 720p with 60 fps, which is really weird because I can emulate unleashed on 360, a better looking game, at stable 60 fps just fine with no issues. Is this a problem with the game or is it just my machine?

 

I didn't play the game, but saw a full playthrough of it.
IMO it felt like a decent attempt at a complete experience.
Cutscenes, voice acting, diverse sceneries, engaging plot.
And it having been developed by a russian team, at this point in time, felt refreshing and amazing.
I still hear the Final Fight theme, it's a great listen to me.

Still, it's saddening the devs turned out to be like that.
They have all the right to promote themselves as game devs, but not in such a way.
SEGA has always been lenient on modding and fangaming, but this could turn it all 180 in no time.
I can only hope others take an example out of them on the better sides alone.
Maybe someday SEGA might accept a fangame or so as official part of the series.

 

As far as I understand it, Sonic Omens is a Sonic X fangame?

I also don't understand this Maria controversy since no one on the internet has any pictures/video of whatever is going on there.

I doubt I'll ever watch a playthough of it.

 

It seems to combine the gameverse with Sonic X, setting the fangame between Unleashed and Colors.

Regarding said controversy, I'll just leave this doc I found on Reddit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mXC2FHMieDdt3giLxmPNz92-Ghips1EOCwsB1LRGudc/edit

 

It's not very good.

There is just very little thought put into how the level design and controls work together, from what I have played. In terms of movement, the game feels pretty nice, but the levels themselves are mostly processions of bland setpieces and obstacles with little in the way of flair, like the creators scooped out terrain and then slathered Sonic Stuff™ over it. Levels tend to just kinda end out of nowhere, and there's little sense of a build-up or progression. They are also extremely linear, with very little cool stuff to find if you want to use Sonic's moveset to explore.

And the Tails levels...dear god. I played only one. It is astoundingly awful. I dunno how they managed to make the worst fucking flying controls I have ever seen in a video game, but they did, by god they did. This isn't even "shitty flying level in an early-2000s action game" level, it's worse than that. I actually haven't gotten past the first Tails level. I see no reason to. The fact that there are more is enough to make me want to not play this game already, what I've seen of later levels shows that they aren't much better than what I did play, and Spark 3 is miles ahead of this game in terms of controls, level design, progression, and cohesive art direction.

 

The Sonic Show intends to throw a 1-hour-long or so video this week, about Sonic Omens and the controversies about it.
He claims some stuff thrown into the wild are either false or one-sided, while not refuting the devs' standing to the fans.

I usually don't give much care about Tubers, but I'm curious about what he may have to tell the world about the fangame.

 

Before/After are good, but they've definitely aged and it is showing. I haven't been able to keep up with some of the recent 2D fangames, but I hear stuff like Fallen Star, Triple Trouble 16 and Time Twisted are up there.

Also, SRB2 after 2.2 is pretty strong, other than the last stages clearly being left over from a less-polished phase of development.

 

Maybe among 3D Sonic fangames, I guess?
I'd rather not compare 2D & 3D fangames...

 

Omens makes me sad. I really enjoyed my time with it, I thought it was a lot of fun and I loved the production values.

But that enjoyment has been tainted by the developer's actions. I can't in good conscience support this game because of it.

 

Any interest I had in this game at one point has basically evaporated. Outside of the animations I've only heard bad things, particularly on the developer's end.

If you ask for money you better be able to back it up. This doesn't sound like they backed it up, while also monetizing something that's a real legal gray area but scummy regardless.

 

I totally am allowed to like "bad things", i have quite a few controversial Sonic opinions lol. But for me, there's a point where it becomes difficult to separate art vs. artist. In the case of someone like Michael Jackson, he's dead. He's not going to see my support either way.

But for me personally this is just a bridge too far. Which is a shame, because I really do like the game.

 

I’ve been staying far away from the Omens discourse but I hafta say that GT and Robo Blast 2 are pretty polished 3D games. I have not and will not play Omens so I’m not trying to take a dig at them. I just don’t think there is a clear cut argument that it is MORE polished than GT or Robo Blast 2. Now Omens has multiple (7?) episodes so maybe Omens has more content than the 2 games I mentioned which means that it’s hard for fandevs to polish such a large product… but if that’s the case then that’s a very different argument than “Omens is the most polished fangame”.

 

I played Omens and got to the plane level where I quit because it was terrible, tedious and unfun. Everything prior was good, I liked it. Especially first stage.

I wanna address a couple of things from the allegations.
Just like everyone else I too think that the shouldn't have monetized the thing so bluntly. They are using property they don't have the right to.

These are couple of things I strongly disagree with:

Stolen music is suddenly bad now. It's a freaking fangame. Fangames steal music all the time and no one ever gives a crap. I've used """""stolen""""" music in my fangame and no one ever bet an eye. It's a fangame, using unlicensed music is norm for fangames, stop being hypocrites.

Maria having modeled panties is child pornography now. This may be a bit controversial but I must voice my opinion.
First of all she's not a person. And she most definitely does not look like a child or like any real human being to speak of. She is an anime character which comes with all the attributes (giant bubblehead, giant eyes, disproportionate body, etc). She could be 86 for what I care, she doesn't resemble a real actual human being to me.
Maybe if they used something that attempts at realism like something from Last of Us or Detroit become Human (and I'm sure child models from those have A TON of porn) you'd maybe have a bit of a case but she's not. You might as well complain about all those monster tit 12yo girls from MHA or something.
Equating that (a texture on a 3D model of an anime character, who is neither a person, nor resembles a person) to child pornography is ridiculous and prudish.

 

Coming from the other thread, I want to reiterate: if you're going to attack the developers for their personal behavior, that's one thing (even though I think it ought to be against the rules for essentially dragging outside fandom drama in here). But don't use that as an excuse to say horrible shit about the game itself. At the end of the day, it is still a free Sonic fangame on the internet and should be treated with the same civility as any other.

If someone were to berate someone else's fangame on here the way people are attacking Omens as a product, such as TT-16, they'd be called an asshole, regardless of its quality. If you're going to criticize the game itself, you ought to be constructive. Don't lower yourself to their level out of some biased personal vendetta. Be better.

 

From what I'm getting it's because her panties say "Bad Girl" on them, but I agree otherwise.

 

I just checked both threads, and other than maybe one guy, I don't think any of the criticisms Omens is getting as a game are particularly unreasonable. Clearly people have gripes with it, and the devs have only themselves to blame for not listening to feedback. The camera has issues, the level design can be soul-sucking at times, everyone hates the plane levels and I've seen some scripted sequences just outright fail over and over. These do not seem to come purely from anger at the devs' behavior, even if them calling themselves better than Sonic Team totally invites all that anyway.

Without even needing to play the game, I can already offer my own, which is that I can't stand that bloom-overload, everything-reflective, crazy-particle-effects look it has going. Smacks of bad reshade presets. Seriously, who wants to play a Sonic game that looks like this? I would much rather have crude graphics that are consistent and readable with strong direction than the shiniest voids other people's money can buy. None of this is helped by the motion blur, the screen-shake from the stomp and the shockwave from the boost being way more intense than in official Sonic games, muddying things further.